The Award Winning Imperfect Kitchen!

I wrote this piece for my weekly post, feeling grateful for the ready-made inspiration. My editor (ie: friend who checks my words for glaring errors before I post) read it and said, “No”.

Apparently it’s not The Imperfect Kitchen enough. So, here’s a one-off post in gratitude to the talented Oak Tree Lane, who awarded The Imperfect Kitchen a blogging award recently. Their lovely blog is full of photography, crafts, food and words and are well worth following.

Called the Liebster Award, and created to build relationships within the blogging community, it’s all based around the number 11. To accept the award, you must

• Post the award on your blog
• Thank the blogger who presented the award to you and link back to their blog
• Share 11 things about yourself
• Answer the 11 questions given to you by the person that nominated you
• Nominate 11 bloggers who have less than 200 followers
• Create 11 questions for your nominees to answer
• Notify your nominees by posting your nomination on their blog.

About Me

While writing this list, I kept thinking about the saying, “I’m not much, but I’m all I think about”. Anyway, here goes…

1. Gossip magazines are banned from my house. And if you try to have a conversation with me about a famous person’s personal life I will immediately channel the interest levels of a two-week dead person.
2. I really like clean houses but don’t much like cleaning. Ideally, I’d be living with someone who enjoys mild levels of cleaning-based Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder so I could just follow their lead.
3. My husband is a complete house-slob. Damn.
4. During news programs, I can often be heard shouting at the television, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, that’s NOT NEWS!”  whenever a story comes up about something that’s not news; like pretty much anything a famous person does, or a mindlessly repeated press statement from a company or political party. Watching news while sitting next to me is a lesson in tolerance for anyone.
5. I adore Have I Got News For You and some of my favourite memories are from the years of Friday nights at 10pm when my whole family would watch the show together.
6. I like a well-made lemon tart more than any dessert in the world.
7. I wish I was smarter, funnier and braver than I am. In the meantime, I’m lucky to be around people who are all three, and take every opportunity to be near them in the hope it’ll rub off one day.
8. I meditate daily and have done, nearly consistently, for the last 10 years. It’s not a religious practise for me but an exercise in sanity, and I love it. Mostly.
9. I enjoy the company of almost everyone I meet. Not only does this make life more fun, it also makes the world a fluffier place to live. If someone’s not interesting I believe it’s my responsibility to ask better questions until they are.
10. I love cars and although I agree with everything scientists are saying about global warming, I’d still really like to own a gorgeous gas-guzzler.
11. Richard Ayoade is completely brilliant. That’s not strictly about me, but I like to think you’ll know me a little better by understanding who can make me spit drinks all over my laptop when I watch them on YouTube.

Answering Oak Tree Lane’s 11 questions 

1. What is your most memorable meal? I have a terribly memory so it’s usually the one I’ve just eaten.

2. What is the name of the last book you read? I just finished reading The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer, it’s a beautiful story. I read voraciously and am always (and I mean, always) looking for new books, authors and literary obsessions.

3. If you could be anywhere right now, where would you be? London. Hands down. I’ve lived in Australia for more than 10 years and I’m currently missing my home city like a Big Ben shaped hole in my stomach.

4. What is your favourite holiday destination? Right now, it’s London. In the past it’s been lots of other places. Mostly until I start missing London and then it’s London all over again.

5. Who is your favourite singer / band? It depends on my mood. There’s not much I won’t listen to, although I probably veer towards musicians who write their own stuff. Anyone from Mahler to Leonard Cohen to Adele to Radiohead to Queen to Tool to… (you get the drift)

6. If you could go back in time what would you change? Nothing. I’ve read about the butterfly effect and understand just enough about the potential pitfalls of time travel to be scared about what might happen.

7. What did you have for dinner last night? Shepherds Pie made with beef and pork. It’s a high effort, slow cook meal over 4 hours, but worth every melting mouthful.

8. If you could go back in time and relive a day what would it be? I’d like to have been in Germany in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down, or in South Africa in 1994 when Nelson Mandela was voted in as president. Either of those days are far more interesting than anything that’s happened to me.

9. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? It’d probably be my self-centred fear — that I’m going to lose what I’ve got or not get what I want. It keeps me frozen in inaction and clutching at things that are no longer helpful.

10. Where do you hope to be in 5 years time? Mothering, wife-ing, friend-ing, writing, reading, learning, baking, laughing, meditating, earning.

11. Name one person who inspires you. Anyone who follows their heart into new challenges and keeps walking steadily forwards. I just want to sit beside them and soak up their courage and determination.

About You

Now we get to the bit I really enjoy — awarding some of you! I really was going to nominate 11 bloggers, and actually found some great bloggers who all had under 200 followers that I hadn’t read before just so I could nominate them for this award.

And then I thought about how that doesn’t really seem to be in the spirit of blogger-2-blogger awards and would dilute the people I really have found a connection with over my blogging existence. And then I realised I’d thought about it way too much and I was just going to go with my initial 7 bloggers. What can I say? I’m a revolutionary.

So, my Liebster Awards go to

1. Sunshine and Salad I’ve never hidden the fact that I adore Sara’s blog. Most of my comments on her page are only slightly short of gushing. She’s a superb writer and every time she threatens to stop blogging I feel momentarily and pathetically sad.
2. Essentially Being I know Jane in offline life and she’s as amazing as her blog. Her journey’s truly inspirational and I love following her online travels through her cancer prognosis and her recovery.
3. This Mom Gig Kelly started our blogging relationship by writing a lovely compliment on The Imperfect Kitchen. Well done her, as I immediately became her fan. Luckily for me, she’s also a talented and engaging writer with a questing mind.
4. Seven Intentions I also know Tina offline and she’s one of the kindest people I know. Read her blog and you’ll find someone who’s funny, smart, thoughtful, modest and steadily moving her inner-hippy onto the beautiful outer.
5. Family Meal Blog I’m confused that this blog doesn’t have thousands of followers. It’s a very, very good blog indeed and I have so many of her recipes on my ‘to do’ list that I’ll never get to make them all.
6. Subatomic Tourism – I’m adding Subatomic Tourism because they haven’t got a follower count on their blog so I can pretend they’re less popular than they clearly are. Because, STOP IT! Really. Amazing, talented and funny all in one picture per post.
7. Robin Ince’s Blog – I’m basing Robin’s ‘not 200 followers’ purely on the fact that he doesn’t seem to have a huge amount of blog engagement; which is crazy because he’s an excellent and experienced writer and thinker. His writing’s some of my favourite on the web.

The questions for my winners are

1. Which book(s) should I add to my ‘don’t miss’ list?
2. If you could give $10m to any person or organisation other than yourself, who or what would it be?
3. What’s your Myers Briggs type and Star Trek Personality (click on each to find out if you don’t already know)? What do these tell us about you?
4. Is ignorance bliss?
5. If you could change one policy of your current government, what would it be?
6. If you could ban one word or phrase from the English language, what would you choose?
7. You have to live, for one year, in a different town, city or country to your current home, where is it?
8. Salt or sugar?
9. Who or what was your favourite discovery of the last year?
10. What is the most fulfilling thing in your life?
11. Where do you hope to be in 5 years time (question gleefully stolen from Oak Tree Lane!)?

Anyone else who wants to join in, I genuinely want to hear your answers to one or all of these questions. The comment section is all yours…